LifeTuner Live Podcast
The first edition of Lifetuner Chat Carnival is posted. Life’s Lessons Learned Hard is the theme and it seems that many folks have learned their best lessons the hard way. My post “Never Again” was included and I want to give many thanks to Keith Morris for organizing the carnival. So give their site a look and enjoy many of the great posts where people did “stupid with zeros on the end”, but manged to learn from it.
Tonight at 10pm EDT there will be a live podcast on Talkshoe where some of the posters will discuss their stories and take questions. You can follow this link to join us tonight or check it out later via the download.
Never again
The words “never again” reflect true pain. The kind of pain where your DNA gets altered in the process. I can remember the day that I uttered these words. I will never again buy a house before I sell my existing house.
Now that I say it out loud, it sounds pretty obvious. And I wished that it had sounded that obvious the day we signed a contract for a new home without a contingency to sell our existing home (our Realtor said the builder wasn’t taking contingent offers). House fever was in full affect and my wife and I were getting ready to pay for it (literally).
Since I am telling you this story, you can probably assume that we were not able to sell our old house. So we had to make two mortgage payments a month; not for just one month, not for just two months, but for six long months!!! All this with a 9 month old baby and my wife was expecting our 2nd child. sigh.
Just writing about it brings back the fear, the stress, and the anger. My job suffered, my marriage suffered, my life suffered. We lived on credit cards during this time which did little to help my stress. So it was at this point I said it. “Never Again!”
I want to thank the nice, young, married couple who eventually bought my old house and saved us from our stupidity. I should probably go by there and take them a nice dessert. But for all the pain we suffered, it did teach us a valuable lesson that I will always share with others.
Braking the Bank
Along this journey of mine, I have really pushed the bounds of my comfort zone. Whether it has been running, creating a budget, or just saying “no”; I knew that I needed to make changes in my life. Today, I continued the progress and once again yielded great results. I was able to replace my worn out brake pads and rotors on my wife’s (almost paid-off) minivan.
The mechanic, several months ago, had quoted me almost $650 to do the repair. Usually, this would have been something I would never thought to attempt. “What happens if I mess it up?” would have crippled me before I ever got started in my former “life”. Thanks to a co-worker (Ted, you are the man!), I was convinced that this isn’t just something I could do, but something I must do.
The obvious benefit to the repair was the immediate savings. A $650 repair job was pared down to $190 which saved me almost $500 as well as saving this month’s budget from total disaster. I think the best part was the confidence that I could make the repairs again when needed. Furthermore, other repairs will not be so quickly dismissed as un-doable.
It’s funny to me how something that just started as improving my financial lot in life has really become more about improving my entire life. But if nothing else, I have learned that leaving your comfort zones can yield unpredictable, but positive returns. So what are you waiting for? Try something new and have no fear.
Free From Debt Guy makes the Carnival!
The latest issue of the the Personal Finance Carnival is out this week and it includes a post from yours truly. Free From Debt Guy would like to give many thanks to BudgetsAreSexy for hosting this week’s Carnival and for including my post. Check out the Carnival and read many other great blog posts from other folks who share the dream of living well without debt.
Looking back can help you move forward
Today I checked my phone bill online and was getting ready to pay. I happened to noticed a monthly chart button on the page. I clicked it and then was rewarded with the following graph.
I had cut out my telephone landline in December and now I can see that it definitely was the right choice. The graph shows my bills being reduced from an average of $90 to $37.95!! These days, we are all looking for ways to make a dent in our personal expenditures. Looking back upon my “old” spending habits in this phone bill example, I could really see I had made a difference (almost to the tune of $400) in my finances.
I am going to continue to look back to motivate myself to move forward. If you have old credit card statements lying around, check them to see how far you have come on your plan. You will enjoy seeing those old statements that terrified you in the past with a new perspective.
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